"Human societies have a large impact on mammal faunas. Conversely, over the course of history, human culture has been shaped by interactions with mammal communities. The proposed research will tease out how the interplay between climatic factors and community dynamics affected the composition of large mammal faunas and the distribution and behaviour of human groups in northwest Europe, focusing on the warm period known as the Last Interglacial (around 120,000 years ago).During this period, important differences occurred between large mammal communities of the British Isles and the continent. In particular, humans, horses and forest rhinos (the latter two were prime prey species for human groups during the cold period before the Last Interglacial) are missing from the British faunas. A comparison between continental Europe and the British Isles provides a unique opportunity to study the interactions between humans, their competitors (large carnivores) and their prey species.An innovative combination of palaeoecological and morphometric approaches, including palaeoenvironmental modelling, statistical analysis, food web topology, geometric morphometrics, and microwear and mesowear analysis, will be applied to fossil assemblages to address these questions. The integration of different levels of analysis (populations, species, communities) will greatly increase our insight into the dynamics of mammal communities in rapidly changing environments.The research will form part of a postdoctoral fellowship, enabling the applicant to move to an institute which has the appropriate knowledge and resources to facilitate the acquisition of new skills and the application of new research methods by the applicant. The proposed research will strengthen the applicant’s position as an academic researcher after a trans-national mobility period for carrying out PhD research and expand on previously established contacts with researchers and institutes across northern Europe and Russia."